Some cases of unruly airline passengers
are so egregious that a higher authority is needed.
You can’t get much higher than the Federal
Bureau of Investigation.
At the behest of the Federal Aviation
Administration, the FBI is investigating more than 40
cases of unruly behavior.
43 to be exact, over the past year.
That’s still just a small percentage of
the nearly 1,400 complaints of unruly behavior through the first six months of
this year. And that number is smaller than the peak of nearly 6,000 unruly
passenger cases that were reported in 2021 at the height of the pandemic and mask-wearing.
The FBI and the FAA have had a reciprocal
agreement to prosecute some cases in the hopes of deterring unruly passengers.
In the last three years, the FAA has referred more than 300 cases to the FBI.
Those include instances where passengers
have physically attacked crew members.
Other cases involve passengers who
allegedly tried to breach the cockpit or inappropriately touched fellow
passengers and crew. It is against federal law to interfere with a flight.
It’s not the first time the FBI has had to become
involved
in the travel industry.
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